


The names I know you by

by Pamplemousse



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pamplemousse/pseuds/Pamplemousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes does not know everything about John Watson, but he devotes a great deal of energy to trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The names I know you by

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first dip into fan fiction in years -- the Sherlock fandom is very inspiring. The prompt came from [Anarion's 365 Days of 221Bs](http://archiveofourown.org/series/18638), which is shaping up to be a really lovely series.

Sherlock Holmes does not know everything about John Watson, but he devotes a great deal of energy to trying.

It’s irritating, really. He dedicates mental space to tracking the foods John prefers to eat for breakfast and the precise mood that accompanies a craving for Thai takeaway. Sherlock knows the number of minutes John lets his tea brew, knows the biscuits in the cupboard are left for days at the surgery that are crowded with flus and an overwrought staff, knows exactly how long John will allow him to ignore meals before thrusting a sandwich and a glass of juice across the table.

Sherlock can recite the length of each of John’s fingers, can use his familiarity with the planes of his face to sketch the shape of John’s skull. He knows how long John leaves the nails on his fingers and toes before clipping them off and knows his preferred pattern for shaving. He’d watched as John allowed his hair to grow out during the winter and had nearly leapt out of his chair with a measuring tape when he came home with it cropped short again.

When they’d met, Sherlock had not imagined John Watson to be a man of complexity. Yet he finds himself caught daily in the strange, deceptive plainness that demands study. Sherlock craves a lifetime to examine every cell of John, to peel him back in layers, reconstruct him, repeat the experiment. Hypothesize, test, revise hypothesis, retest.

It is late in the night and John lies in their bed with one hand resting on his stomach, the other at his side. His head is turned slightly, away from the light from the window and toward where Sherlock lies, sitting up on his elbow. The duvet is tucked midway up John’s chest, tangled around his feet. Sherlock watches the steady inhale, exhale of John’s sleep as it is translated through the light cotton covering them.

John’s body is riddled with contradictions. Bits of him are hard with corded muscles – his arms and his shoulders, his thighs, his calves. Sherlock had once unintentionally dedicated an afternoon to memorizing the exact structure and movement of John’s uncovered forearms while he tapped away at his laptop in the peak of a summer heat.

But elsewhere, in the spaces in between, John is soft, vulnerable. The skin at his neck, just under his jaw. The soft curve of his lower abdomen. The arches of his feet, the tuck at the back of his knees.

His hands. John has sturdy hands, short, solid fingers. Carpals, metacarpals, phalanges; flexible, capable, but joined to his forearms by a thin point of fragility.

In this position, the skin at John’s wrists is impossible to examine. Irritating, but no great hardship. Sherlock has already dedicated its texture to memory; at the wrists, John is smooth, sensitive. Sherlock has memorized the pattern of blood vessels visible through the skin, has measured out the beat of John’s pulse and felt it quicken as he is drawn in for a kiss.

John sighs and frowns in his sleep. He shifts, his knee moving to connect with Sherlock’s thigh. Patella to femur.

Sherlock reaches out a finger and lightly touches the lid of John’s left eye. He lifts it carefully, revealing the white of John’s sclera, the blue of his iris, and John grunts and twitches awake.

He blinks up at Sherlock in the glow of the streetlights bleeding in through the window. He frowns then sighs then smiles and stretches his shoulders. Sherlock’s finger hovers over his face, moves to rub slightly over the skin under John’s eye – loose, soft.

“Quit it, you berk,” John says, voice rough, quiet. He reaches out and smears his hand over Sherlock’s face, down his cheek, hooking around his neck. “Lie down and quit poking at me.”

Sherlock allows himself to be drawn down into the blankets, watching as John resettles, sighs again, smiles again, just a bit. John’s hand rubs against the base of Sherlock’s skull for a moment, then pulls back to settle on his stomach.

As John’s breathing slows and his face relaxes, Sherlock takes the opportunity to tuck closer and curl his hand around the one resting on John’s stomach. John’s lips twitch in a small smile and his fingers squeeze Sherlock’s briefly.

Sherlock slides a thumb under John’s wrist and finds the pulse point, folded beside the radial bone. It throbs against his finger, strong, even. He watches John’s face and listens to his breath, counting off beats as he slides into sleep.

A thousand points of data swarm in his brain. Heart rate, respiration, the texture of his skin, the heat of him, the smell of him, the color of his hair under the blue-yellow light of their bedroom. Sherlock floats for a moment, lets the data course through him, creating a white noise that drowns out all else.

He tightens his hand around John’s wrist, tucks his head down against his shoulder, closes his eyes. Sherlock narrows his focus to the steady _thump-thump-thump_ under his thumb, imagines the blood moving through John’s body, replenishing the oxygen in his cells, active and vital even as he rests. He imagines his own pulse slowing to match John’s, wills their breathing to synchronize and his muscles to slacken.

Sherlock measures out the tempo of John’s pulse and allows the rhythm to pull him under.

**Author's Note:**

> The initial prompt was "delicate." Find me tumbln over [here](http://mysterybees.tumblr.com).


End file.
